Previews

NASCAR 08

EA sets out to make a NASCAR game that'll satisfy gear heads and still appeal to Sunday drivers.

Spiffy:

New "Chase mode" with cool challenges; more customization of cars; high scalability of realism levels.

Iffy:

Various HUD displays clutter the screen; no knockout in the graphics department; no downloadable content for PS3 version.

It's tough to please everyone, especially when they're fans of a racing sport as popular as NASCAR. On one hand you want to please all the hardcore NASCAR fanatics who care about whether or not you can adjust the amount of downforce on your car and tweaking the camber of your wheels. Then you have the NASCAR fan who just wants to drive fast and have fun and not worry about any real-world complications such as the laws of physics. With NASCAR 08 EA hopes to appeal to both camps.

First up are a number of new features for the NASCAR die-hard. "We went crazy with tuning this year" says Sean Wilson, Senior Designer at Electronic Arts. In previous "NASCAR" games you could only make general adjustments that affected four basic handling characteristics of your ride. These basic sliders are back, but there are more detailed options for folks who want more detailed control over the setup of their cars. This means you can mess with gear ratios, tire pressure, and all the other different parts of the car that can be tweaked and tuned to perfection or just stick with the old way and keep it simple.

Having 12 players play online at once is a new high for this console series.

A very robust telemetric feedback system is available to help you see how effective your tweaks are and examine the efficiency of your driving. Much like the telemetric system in Forza Motorsport 2 this handy feature will tell you everything from tire temperature to how much you're turning the steering wheel along with all the other mechanical and environmental effects working on your vehicle. As an added bonus, gear heads can save their optimizations and upload them online for their buddies to use.

Don't worry if all that sounds like too much to deal with, NASCAR 08 has plenty of features designed to appeal to gamers who just want to get on the road and put the pedal to the metal. As is the norm nowadays there are a number of driving assists to help you keep your car on the road and off the walls. These are nothing we haven't seen before, but one fresh addition is a graphical representation that displays the wake left by the car in front of you. This display shows you the sweet spot for drafting and goes from blue to green to let you know when you're doing it right. It's definitely a handy feature. Our only complaint is that the current graphics for the system need to be more transparent so that it doesn't clutter up the screen.